Please Refer The Engineer From Your API Team To This Story

13 Sep 2018

I reach out to API providers on a regular basis, asking them if they have an OpenAPI or Postman Collection available behind the scenes. I am adding these machine readable API definitions to my index of APIs that I monitor, while also publishing them out to my API Stack research, the API Gallery, APIs.io, work to get them published in the Postman Network, and syndicated as part of my wider work as an OpenAPI member. However, even beyond my own personal needs for API providers to have a machine readable definition of their API, and helping them get more syndication and exposure for their API, having an definition present significantly reduces friction when on-boarding with their APIs at almost every stop along a developer’s API integration journey.

One of the API providers I reached out to recently responded with this, “I spoke with one of our engineers and he asked me to refer you to https://developer.[company].com/”. Ok. First, I spend over 30 minutes there just the other day. Learning about what you do, reading through documentation, and thinking about what was possible–which I referenced in my email. At this point I’m guessing that the engineer in question doesn’t know what an OpenAPI or Postman Collection is, they do not understand the impact these specifications are having on the wider API ecosystem, and lastly, I’m guessing they don’t have any idea who I am(ego taking control). All of which provides me with the signals I need to make an assessment of where any API is in their overall journey. Demonstrating to me that they have a long ways to go when it comes to understanding the wider API landscape in which they are operating in, and they are too busy to really come out of their engineering box and help their API consumers truly be successful in integrating with their platform.

I see this a lot. It isn’t that I expect everyone to understand what OpenAPI and Postman Collections are, or even know who I am. However, I do expect people doing APIs to come out of their boxes a little bit, and be willing to maybe Google a topic before responding to question, or maybe Google the name of the person they are responding to. I don’t use a gmail.com address to communicate, I am using apievangelist.com, and if you are using a solution like Clearbit, or other business intelligence solution, you should always be retrieving some basic details about who you are communicating with, before you ever respond. That is, you do all of this kind of stuff if you are truly serious about operating your API, helping your API consumers be more successful, and taking the time to provide them with the resources they need along the way–things like an OpenAPI, or Postman Collections.

Ok, so why was this response so inadequate?

No API Team Present - It shows me that your company doesn’t have any humans their to support the humans that will be using your API. My email went from general support, to a backend engineer who doesn’t care about who I am, and about what I need. This is a sign of what the future will hold if I actually bake their API into my applications–I don’t need my questions lost between support and engineering, with no dedicated API team to talk to.

No Business Intelligence - It shows me that your company has put zero thought into the API business model, on-boarding, and support process. Which means you do not have a feedback loop established for your platform, and your API will always be deficient of the nutrients it needs to grow. Always make sure you conduct a lookup based upon on the domain, or Twitter handle or your consumers to get the context you need to understand who you are talking to.

Stuck In Your Bubble - You aren’t aware of the wider API community, and the impact OpenAPI, and Postman are having on the on-boarding, documentation, and other stops along the API lifecycle. Which means you probably aren’t going to keep your platform evolving with where things are headed.

Ok, so why should you have an OpenAPI and Postman Collection?

Reduce Onboarding Friction - As a developer I won’t always have the time to spend absorbing your documentation. Let me import your OpenAPI or Postman Collection into my client tooling of choice, register for a key and begin making API calls in seconds, or minutes. Make learning about your API a hands on experience, something I’m not going to get from your static documentation.

Interactive API Documentation - Having a machine readable definition for your API allows you to easily keep your documentation up to date, and make it a more interactive experience. Rather than just reading your API documentation, I should be able to make calls, see responses, errors, and other elements I will need to truly understand what you do. There are plenty of open source interactive API documentation solutions that are driven by OpenAPI and Postman, but you’d know this if you were aware of the wider landscape.

Generate SDKs, and Other Code - Please do not make me hand code the integration with each of your API endpoints, crafting each request and response manually. Allow me to autogenerate the most mundane aspects of integration, allowing OpenAPI and Postman Collection to act as the integration contract.

Discovery - Please don’t expect your potential consumers to always know about your company, and regularly return to your developer.[company].com portal. Please make your APIs portable so that they can be published in any directory, catalog, gallery, marketplace, and platform that I’m already using, and frequent as part of my daily activities. If you are in my Postman Client, I’m more likely to remember that you exist in my busy world.

These are just a few of the basics of why this type of response to my question was inadequate, and why you’d want to have OpenAPI and Postman Collections available. My experience on-boarding will be similar to that of other developers, it just happens that the application I’m developing are out of the normal range of web and mobile applications you have probably been thinking about when publishing your API. But this is why we do APIs, to reach the long tail users, and encourage innovate around our platforms. I just stepped up and gave 30 minutes of my time (now 60 minutes with this story) to learning about your platform, and pointing me to your developer.[company].com page was all you could muster in return?

Just like other developers will, if I can’t onboard with your API without friction, and I can’t tell if there is anyone home, and willing to give me the time of day when I have questions, I’m going to move on. There are other platforms that will accommodate me. The other downside of your response, and me moving on to another platform, is that now I’m not going to write about your API on my blog. Oh well? After eight years of blogging on APIs, and getting 5-10K page views per day, I can write about a topic or industry, and usually dominate the SEO landscape for that API search term(s) (ego still has control). But…I am moving on, no story to be told here. The best part of my job is there are always stories to be told somewhere else, and I get to just move on, and avoid the friction wherever possible when learning how to put APIs to work.

I just needed this single link to provide in response to my email response, before I moved on!